Do Americans still have the right to defence counsel?

19/03/2013

Fifty years ago the United States Supreme Court unanimously announced in Gideon v Wainwright that the Sixth Amendment guarantees to every criminal defendant in a felony trial the right to a lawyer. Howver, over the past half-century, lawmakers have refused to fund public defenders' offices adequately. And, as it has become more conservative since 1963, the Supreme Court has refused to force them to do so. Read about it in The Atlantic Monthly.

19 March 2013